Why Kids Should Watch South Park

Earlier this week,
I wrote a column for The Daily Beast celebrating the debut of South
Park’s 18th season, which took place on Wednesday night.

Here’s a snippet:

The show is great because it’s true parody and satire not simply
of particular people and causes, but the very way we tell stories,
and the media forms we use to delude ourselves. It has this in
common with Parker and Stone’s Team America: World
Police (2004), the R-rated, all-puppet movie that holds
up long after most of us have forgotten exactly who Janeane
Garofalo, Helen Hunt, and Hans Blix ever were. Team
America targets buddy movies, Broadway musicals, United
Nations gatherings and self-important celebrities, and so much more
that it deconstructs virtually all popular forms of persuasion.

So it is with South Park, which edifies as it
offends—or maybe edifies because it offends.
Curiously, back in 1997, South Park was the very
first show to get a dreaded “MA” rating when networks started
rating their shows to forestall
legal action from Bill Clinton’s Justice Department. That
means it’s for “mature audiences” only.

Yet South Park is actually the
perfect show for kids and not simply because it takes
seriously all the travails of grammar school and traffics in
obsessions of childhood. Virtually every episode explains how
people in charge wield power by whipping up hysteria over nothing,
or try to force all of us into the same social or political
straitjacket. Yes, there’s a lot of cursing and blue material, but
there’s no better classroom for kids to learn the entwined lessons
of skepticism toward authority and respecting true diversity of
opinion.

Read the whole thing.